Founder’s Letter
Most philanthropic writing in international development is too polite. It is written as though the principal challenge were formatting, not imagination; as though the world were starved of decks, frameworks, and carefully managed optimism, rather than starved of institutions built close enough to reality to survive contact with it.
Black Licorice was not built to flatter the habits of international philanthropy. It was built because a great deal of the capital supposedly devoted to maternal and child health still struggles to recognize what should be obvious: in a country as vast and uneven as Indonesia, legitimacy, proximity, and local institutional depth matter more than elegant abstractions assembled at a distance. One “flagship” organization, however articulate, was never going to be enough.
The prevailing model remains strangely theatrical. One organization is selected, one founder is elevated, one theory of change is made legible to donor sensibilities, and then everyone pretends this is the same thing as building a field. It is not. It is a branding exercise dressed up as systems change. The actual work of building durable local organizations, each rooted in a specific place and a specific body of knowledge, is messier, slower, and far more likely to produce something real.
This is the wager Black Licorice has made.
In the first quarter of 2026, Black Licorice announced its first cohort of fellows: five Indonesian-led organizations whose differences are not a weakness of the portfolio but the reason for its existence. These founders are operating across very different geographies, capacities, and organizational stages, yet each is positioned to generate outsized impact in the place they know best. Yuni Setiyawati leads Summit Institute, a $1.5 million organization with 90 staff. Basra Amru is building a lean 15-person team working through sub-district health facilities in Sumatra with the aim of eliminating HPV. Two fellows hold master’s degrees from Harvard’s Global Health Delivery program, and Mustika Wijaya, who is expanding access to clean water across Timor and Flores, is both an Obama Scholar and a Rockefeller Fellow.
That list is not presented as ornament. It is evidence of a deeper claim. There is already serious talent in the field. What is missing is not leadership potential, nor technical seriousness, nor moral urgency. What is missing is the infrastructure that translates local legitimacy into institutional durability and then into international fundability.
That translation work has begun. The fellows have now been onboarded, and planning is underway for the July and August retreat in Bali. The focus is not motivational theater. It is board construction, governance, budgeting, strategy, and the development of KPIs that can withstand external scrutiny and attract multiyear unrestricted support. The first step in that process is a governance and finance self-assessment. Black Licorice donors will receive due diligence reports on all five fellows, because trust without rigor is sentimentality, and rigor without trust is bureaucracy. Neither is enough.
The intellectual case for this work also sharpened during the quarter. The Stanford Social Innovation Review essay, “Scale is a Myth. Embrace the Long Defeat,” was published ahead of the Skoll World Forum and prompted a direct response from Mulago CEO Kevin Starr. That exchange mattered not because polemics are inherently useful, but because it surfaced an argument that development philanthropy too often avoids: the belief that scale is a universal virtue can become a substitute for asking what kinds of institutions are actually needed in specific places, under specific political and social conditions. A portfolio of credible, distributed, place-based organizations may look less tidy than a flagship. It may also be far closer to reality.
This quarter also brought tangible financial progress. Two new donors committed to take a 10% stake in Black Licorice’s 2026 budget, bringing the current secured amount to $225,000. That support is meaningful not merely because it increases available capital, but because it validates the model. The aim is not to gather admirers. The aim is to attract a small set of serious backers willing to underwrite institutional development before the results are fashionable.
The next quarter is already clear. Black Licorice expects to secure an additional $67,500 in funding, convene the Board of Trustees and Advisors in Jakarta in June, and distribute the first tranche of unrestricted funding to fellows. Members of the Global Advisory Board, including Jen Goh, Joanne Yoong, and Nan Chen, are expected in Bali for the July retreat, joined by special guests Wen Yi of Johnson & Johnson and Amit Anthony Alex of Dovetail Foundation. Board charters will also be reviewed as part of the due diligence reporting process.
The full year ambition is equally direct. Black Licorice expects to surpass the current $225,000 blue-sky budget raise, with 10 donors each taking a 10% stake in the overall budget. The expectation is to distribute $100,000 across the five fellows this year, laying the groundwork for more unrestricted capital to reach Indonesian founders and organizations. A second retreat is planned for Bali in November. Advisory board members are also expected to join site visits and fundraising meetings with fellows in Singapore in December. Donors who take a 10% stake will receive due diligence reports on all five fellows.
There is, of course, a more comfortable path available. One could choose a single photogenic organization, elevate it as a proxy for a nation, and offer donors the emotional reassurance that complexity has been conquered by narrative. That path is easier to explain. It is also less likely to build what Indonesia actually needs.
Black Licorice has chosen a different path because reality demanded it. If this model succeeds, it will not be because it was tidy. It will be because it was true enough to the country it was built to serve.
The mission continues.
Sincerely,
Zack Petersen, Founder Black Licorice